Background

For this portfolio I have submitted two of my own compositions: Waterloo (Track #1) and Belfast (Track #2). I submitted these two compositions for a few reasons. Firstly, they both have vocals, and as a linguistics student, I am interested in any conclusions I can make about the vocal aspect of these tracks. I also find these two tracks to be fairly distinct. Waterloo includes synth sounds but also features acoustic sounding drums, a B3 organ, and a Wurlitzer keyboard. Belfast, on the other hand, is more electronic, being very synth heavy, with electronic sounding drums, as well as a fasterer overall tempo.

I composed these two tracks in similar ways. For waterloo, I started with the synth riff featured in the beginning. From there, I added drums to create a syncopated groove. I then finished the A section by adding a vocal melody. The B section came naturally to me, as the lower energy A section called for an energetic and climactic B section. For the A2 section, I decided to bring down the energy a bit and only feature synth piano instead of vocals. The track then ends with a B2 section identical to B1 and an outro section.

For Belfast, I started with a synth chord sequence with a voice leading that I found particularly satisfying. I arpeggiated the synth and added drums to create a very high energy, albeit short, section. The intro actually actually came to me last, and features only piano and voice. This composition is admittedly underdeveloped, but I decided to use it for its high level of idiosyncracy.

Analysis

Waterloo (left) has a more structured, repetitive harmonic pattern, while Belfast (right) has more variations and dynamic tonal shifts. Waterloo seems to be in the key of B major, while Belfast seems to be in C minor, though Belfast’s key is a bit more ambiguous. Additionally, Waterloo’s song structure is more visible in its chromogram, where the B sections are clearly visible. In Belfast’s, though the track features two very distinct sections, it doesn’t seem to show much if any shift in song structure.

Analysis

The timbre-based self-similarity matrices (upper) provide a much clearer picture of the structure of the tracks than the chroma-based self-similarity matrices (lower). Take a look at The Belfast’s SSMs, for example. In the timbre-based SSM, at around the 60 second mark, we see a dramatic change in the graph. This is likely because the beginning of Belfast features only voice and piano, and then switches to a sawtooth arpeggiated synth sound, which contrasts significantly with the timbre of voice and piano. That being said, the pitch the chroma-based SSNs do not seem to capture this change in dramatic change in song structure. For Waterloo, (#1 & #3), the timbre-based SSN still seems to better capture the structure of the song better than the chromma based SSN, despite the overall timbre in Waterloo being more regular than in Belfast.

Analysis

The tempogram for Waterloo (upper) shows an unchanging BPM of about 83. Belfast’s tempogram is a little less clear. The B section in Belfast does display a constant tempo of around 160 BPM, but the A section’s rhythmic structure doesn’t seem to be well captured by this tempogram. This could be because of the irregular groove of the drums and piano together. Once the B section kicks in around the 60 second mark, there is a steady kick drum that the tempogram is clearly happier about.